


John's room

by alexaprilgarden



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Domesticity, Established Relationship, Gay Sex, Kissing, M/M, Masturbation, Mind Palace, PWP, sherlock cooks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-16 20:16:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13643679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexaprilgarden/pseuds/alexaprilgarden
Summary: There are, strictly speaking, two places Sherlock calls John’s room.One of them is the real room, upstairs in 221B, made of brick and wood, plaster and wallpaper, furniture and military corners on the bed.The other one has a yellow sticky note on its door with John’s room scrawled on it in John’s handwriting, messy after years of taking notes during med school and even more years of hastily scribbling down prescriptions. It’s the room in Sherlock’s mind palace.It is a room, yes. But it’s more than that. It’s a series of events that unfolds upon entering.





	John's room

**Author's Note:**

> Based on @ennisnovember's tumblr prompt: "in sherlocks mind palace is a room where he cooks for john, something quick and easy, and after, they make love, slow and sweet…". I hope this complies. :)
> 
> Beta'ed by the wonderful @green-violin-bow. Thanks _so much,_ dear.  <3

There are, strictly speaking, two places Sherlock calls _John’s room_. 

One of them is the real room, upstairs in 221B, made of brick and wood, plaster and wallpaper, furniture and military corners on the bed. 

The other one has a yellow sticky note on its door with _John’s room_ scrawled on it in John’s handwriting, messy after years of taking notes during med school and even more years of hastily scribbling down prescriptions. It’s the room in Sherlock’s mind palace. 

It is a room, yes. But it’s more than that. It’s a series of events that unfolds upon entering. 

— — 

Sherlock puts pasta into a pot with boiling water, a pinch of salt and olive oil. 

Steps sound on the stairs. 

He checks his watch. 

Right on time. 

— 

“Hey, Sherlock.” 

Long day at the clinic, John is tired, Sherlock can tell from the way he toes off his shoes and doesn’t bother to put them neatly in their place, below the hook where he always hangs his coat. Craving a shower, John. He wants to get out of the clothes he’s been wearing all day and scrub off the residual germs. The sweat from his commute in a crowded tube car, too warm in his winter coat. He’s hungry. Starving, actually. And right now he’s trying to decide on what to do first. 

“That smells…” — John enters the kitchen and tilts his head, looking a little incredulous — “delicious. You’ve, erm, cooked?” 

Sherlock looks up in surprise, momentarily abandoning the microscope. He’d have _bet_ John would choose the shower first. 

“Obviously.” 

John steps closer, behind Sherlock, lifts the lid from one of the pots and glances curiously inside. 

“Spaghetti?” 

“With vegetables and basil pesto.” 

“God, sounds perfect.” He bows down and kisses Sherlock’s curls without touching him with his hands. So he is going to shower first. 

“Just have a quick shower. Back in ten.” 

How lucky that the pasta will be ready in 11 minutes. 

— 

John returns from the bathroom, wearing a t-shirt and jeans that are just a little too worn and comfortable for work. His hair is still damp and he smells like shower gel and shampoo, like low laughter and easiness. 

The microscope is gone now, and John helps Sherlock lay the table. He has a look at the almost-empty shopping bag still sitting on the floor and takes out a bottle of red wine. He’s smiling. 

Sherlock is so very much in love with this tired, happy man. He has to tear his eyes away from him, unable to handle the flood of emotion as he tries to serve dinner. 

They sit, and they eat. They drink. John mixes spaghetti, braised carrots and mushrooms with the pesto on his plate. He tells Sherlock about his day between forks full of pasta. He drinks the majority of his wine after he’s had another helping of dinner, rubbing his hand across his face, and leaning back against his chair. 

Sherlock eats as well, pushes his mushrooms to one side of the plate, just opposite the carrots. Dips them both into the green pesto, winding spaghetti on his fork; takes sips of wine in between. He hasn’t eaten all day, too busy with an experiment, and he starts to feel light-headed. 

He adds a few dry remarks and dead-pan deductions to the stories John tells him from the clinic, and John chuckles. 

Sherlock watches John. 

He watches John when he thinks John doesn’t notice, he always has, and he probably won’t ever stop. 

He watches as the exhaustion etched into the lines of John’s face fades away and as relaxation settles in the corners of his eyes, in his smiles and on his lips. As John straightens, the weight of the day slipping slowly from his shoulders, as he lets go of the tension he’s held in his jaw. 

It makes Sherlock feel proud in a way he rarely has. Proud because he’s contributed to this fascinating change in John Watson, a miracle to witness, like a blossom gradually unfolding, opening its petals after heavy rain. 

— 

Sherlock rarely cooks, but makes a mental note to do so more often. Usually a case comes up, and he forgets about it again. When he does remember though, between cases, early enough in the day to check their food supplies and maybe ask Mrs Hudson to bring some things from Tesco, then it’s — then it’s the best. 

He puts ridiculous effort into making it look quick and easy, making it look casual, as if it was nothing big. Nothing that would make John smile sheepishly and leave him lost for words, realizing that Sherlock has spent hours in the kitchen. Not on an ordinary day like this. 

Still he does try to make it special. Self-made pesto instead of what they sell at the supermarket. Greek Kalamata olive oil, thick and aromatic and golden. An extra handful of basil. That brand of Grana Padano John likes. 

John never quite notices. 

(Or maybe he does. John is the only, the ultimate riddle worth solving and Sherlock isn’t sure he’ll ever succeed.) 

— 

John pushes his empty plate towards the middle of the table. Usually he’d get up, take the dishes and put them in the sink, waiting to be cleaned later. He doesn’t now. 

Instead he smiles at Sherlock, then lowers his gaze, and licks his lips. 

“Come here.” 

His voice has taken on a gravelly note, slightly rough under the easy affection. 

Sherlock gets up, his chair creaking in the silent kitchen as he pushes it back. He craves to feel his hands on John’s body and takes two steps towards him, slowly, deliberately. John straightens his back and lifts his head for a kiss. Sherlock bows down and brushes his lips against John’s, tasting the smile still lingering there. 

Now John is pushing his chair back, leaving room for Sherlock, whom he is guiding closer, hands on his hips. Sherlock follows until he’s sitting in John’s lap, straddling him. He loves this position, loves feeling John under him, loves the way it eventually gives away his arousal and the obvious innuendo of it. Its intimacy. 

Sherlock leans in once more and kisses away some pesto, smudged against the corner of John’s mouth. 

— 

John enjoys kissing. He enjoys it so much that Sherlock had quickly deduced it might be his favourite part of sex. 

“Of course it is,” John had said when Sherlock had asked him once, “I mean the sex is great and I absolutely love it. But the kissing is just — it can be fucking perfect. It’s just, yeah, good?” 

The eloquence of this man. 

The way John Watson kisses Sherlock is slow, teasing and daring. Making Sherlock taste the promise that John will take him apart just as slowly. 

Every kiss carries the memory of their first kiss, which had been a revelation — careful, and posing an unbearable risk at first, and then turning into an avalanche of long-denied want, even taking on an edge of despair. It had changed everything, simply because Sherlock had known that he could never go back to a life where he isn’t allowed to kiss John Watson. 

And this is what Sherlock tries to convey when he kisses John. That he wants to do this — kiss John — until the end of their days. 

He knows John loves his lips, he calls them _full_ and _soft,_ and _obscene_ and _temptation itself._ John has told him ten thousand times — _oh fuck, Sherlock, your fucking lips, Jesus_ — and it makes Sherlock’s heart beat more quickly and it makes him blush to know that maybe John will never stop saying things like these. 

So he kisses John, brushes his lips against his, smears them across his, until John groans. Until he takes Sherlock’s lips between his, and bites them ever so slightly. Sherlock gasps and the way he melts against John makes it painstakingly obvious that he can’t wait for more. 

When John slides his tongue against Sherlock’s, the blood rushes in Sherlock’s veins twice as fast. 

— 

John opens Sherlock’s shirt, three buttons, and kisses Sherlock’s neck down to his chest, sucks the smallest purple bruise against his sternum. Two more buttons, and he kisses his nipples. He licks them briefly, just a hint of what is to come, and pulls the shirttails out of Sherlock’s trousers. He opens the last button and draws a line with one finger from Sherlock’s clavicle across his chest to his navel. Sherlock leans into it, devouring the touch of a single finger as much as it’s physically possible. John smiles, and goes back to kissing Sherlock’s nipples. He bites them, lingering on edge between teasing and stinging, until they can both feel and see Sherlock’s cock getting hard, a bulge in his dark trousers. They both feel John’s cock pressing against Sherlock’s perineum. 

It’s a delicious feeling, getting aroused, being aroused, letting himself be seen in this state. Seeing John like this, his erection a testimony to how much he wants Sherlock. 

Being wanted is a delicious feeling. 

Sherlock takes off his shirt. John strokes his sides, eliciting a ticklish shiver, and then caresses his back and his neck. He runs his fingers through the dark hair under his armpits with a small laugh, placing a kiss to the side of Sherlock’s neck. John loves this, Sherlock knows, loves to smell him despite showers and deodorant. Sometimes he’s outright determined to make him sweat. 

“Get this off,” Sherlock breathes, and pulls the t-shirt over John’s head, hair not damp anymore, but dry and disheveled, somewhere between silver and golden in the light of their kitchen lamp. He kisses him, and he needs to feel John’s warm skin and his muscles under his fingers. And muscles they are, no matter how often John looks at his belly and says that it’s not what it used to be, back when he played rugby at uni, or when he was a soldier. 

“Of course it’s not,” Sherlock would say then, “you’ve aged.” 

And he’d wipe John’s subsequent pained groan off his lips with a feverish kiss, and add, “you’re perfect, John. _Perfect_ ,” and that usually takes John’s mind off his perceived physical shortcomings and draws his attention back to Sherlock. 

Sherlock touches John everywhere he can reach without breaking their kisses. He lets his hands wander across this chest, shoulders, belly. Up his neck, fingernails scraping lightly over his skin and scalp. His touch is just a hint too rough to be gentle, as if touching John hard will help his mind understand that this is real. It never does. He always gapes at this wonder anew, no matter how often they do this. 

John groans, and places both his hands on, no, _under_ his arse, increasing the pressure on both their cocks. _God, this is good,_ Sherlock wants to gasp, rocking his hips against John. And John shifts in his chair, to the edge of it, straightens and gets up, lifting Sherlock with him and pressing him hard against his own body. 

Sherlock wraps his long legs around John, pulling himself closer against him, kissing him messily. He feels John’s breath on his face, huffs of hot air, ragged from physical exertion and and want. 

“Bed,” Sherlock growls. 

“Yes,” John’s voice is strained from the effort of lifting Sherlock, “but I’m not carrying you, you tall and _heavy_ —” 

The rest of his sentence is lost in another kiss. Sherlock gets back on his feet and drags John to their bedroom. 

— 

Sherlock opens his trousers, sliding a hand across his cock and almost shivering at his own touch. He watches John swallow at that. He discards his trousers, slips out of his socks, and looks down at his body, at the damp patch on the front of his pants, and then at John. 

His thoughts fly to the time when John had watched him undress in such a mesmerized fashion that Sherlock had decided to find out how far he could take John’s fascination, his unabashed gaping and lip-licking. While John had stood in their bedroom doorway, Sherlock had shed all his clothes and when he started to stroke himself, very slowly, expecting John to step forward, to go down on him at any minute. But John had just watched. Watched and watched. 

Sherlock had sat back on the edge of the bed, legs spread wide and he’d let John watch. He’d let John watch how his chest flushed with arousal in spite of his vague feeling of embarrassment, of exhibiting a part of himself that was achingly private and that he’d never shared before. He’d let him watch as he wanked. Although he’d felt so very _naked,_ he’d dared to tease — letting John watch as he licked his hand. As he gathered slick saliva from his mouth and spread it on his cock. He’d let him watch as his cock had started to leak, as he’d struggled not to lie down flat on his back and let his legs drop to the sides. He’d stayed sitting, giving John a better view of what he was doing. 

John had murmured curses under his breath and, between his own increasingly desperate sighs, Sherlock had listened. 

He’d let John watch as he’d got close, as his sighs had turned into moans and grown louder, as an expression of despair and desperation for release had swept across his face like a shadow. He’d let John watch as his movements grew frantic, as, still holding John’s gaze, he had called out John’s name — and John still hadn’t taken a step closer. 

John had watched him come. Watched him spurt his semen over his hand and belly, watched him collapse breathlessly on the bed. And then, finally, John had been there, gathering Sherlock in his arms, whispering love and adoration into the shell of his ear. Wrapping a hand around his own cock, stroking until he, too, had come only moments later. 

— 

Tonight John follows at Sherlock’s heels, never taking his hands off him. He takes Sherlock’s hand and turns him around, makes him walk backwards towards the bed. He kisses him, cups the back of his head and threads his fingers into Sherlock’s curls, restlessly caressing his skull. His fingers slide back, across Sherlock’s ears, his thumbs rubbing his cheekbones; at last John pushes one thumb into Sherlock’s mouth, breaking their kiss. 

Sherlock sucks John’s thumb, hollowing his cheeks and bobbing his head slowly up and down as he circles its tip with his tongue. 

“Do it, God, do it,” John gasps. 

Sherlock goes down on his knees and shoves John’s jeans down to his ankles in one go. He presses his face against John’s groin, still clad in dark grey boxer briefs, and John sighs heavily above him. He strips down John’s pants and takes the head of John’s cock between his lips, without applying any pressure to it, just a touch of skin on skin. He wants it to be barely more than a tickle on the tip of John’s cock. He breathes against it, letting the hot, humid air caress it as lightly as his tongue does. 

John shivers. Inhales sharply, slowly. 

“Swallow me down. Take me, Sherlock.” 

He is _begging._

Sherlock takes his time swallowing him down. John runs his hands through Sherlock’s hair again, moaning pleasure and gratitude as Sherlock swirls his tongue across the underside of his cock. 

He’s going lightly, and he spins it out. He’s pleasing John, but he doesn’t take him too close to the edge. He sucks, licks, teases, still so sweetly, even though he starts to feel dizzy with arousal himself. When he tastes John’s precome, he can’t help but groan against John’s cock. 

“Come up here,” John says, kissing Sherlock desperately as soon as he’s standing. 

— 

They’re on their bed, naked, skin on skin. They’re moving, rolling their hips, seeking friction. John’s hands are everywhere on Sherlock’s skin, on his cock, on his arse, on his balls, in his mouth. 

Sherlock wants him, needs him, impatient and greedy. He wants to go faster, he craves _more_. 

“Hey,” John murmurs, pouring the words into his kisses, “I’ve got you.” 

He’s been saying that ever since they started having sex. First to reassure Sherlock, to take away the nervousness and to ease the overload of sensory input. Now he says it to slow Sherlock down, to make him enjoy every stroke, every touch of his hand. 

— 

They fuck slowly. 

Sherlock is lying on his belly, a pillow squeezed under his groin to lift him up. John’s body is on his, heavy, comforting, stilling Sherlock’s mind. John’s hands are threading into his. He is nothing but sensation. 

John is thrusting into him, at a glacial pace. Making sure Sherlock has hit that sweet high where all of his skin is tingling with need. He thrusts into Sherlock’s arse, slick and wet, and pulls out again, almost completely. Sherlock feels every inch of John’s cock moving in and out. John brushes against his prostate, again and again, releasing small surges of electricity that eventually coalesce into a single stream of intense, pure lust. 

Sherlock’s cock is pressed against the pillow by the weight of both their bodies. The small jolt at the end of each thrust, when John pushes into him furthest, gives his cock just a bit of friction against the pillow. It’s not much, almost not enough, but it is so good that Sherlock is sure he will combust with arousal any moment now. 

He can’t coordinate his breathing properly anymore, he is panting too hard, groaning too much. He thinks he might suffocate. 

He thinks he should have come ages ago. 

They take each other further, until Sherlock’s moans become one long, incoherent whine. Until John is so sensitive he slows down instead of speeding up. 

And then it’s just one more thrust. Once more John pushes inside him; pants against the damp skin of his neck. 

And another one — John thrusts slowly, and then Sherlock glides into orgasm, lets it swallow him whole. He is floating, his body dissolving. He is the whole spectrum of light, all the notes in a symphony, the secret formula to explain the universe. He might be screaming or crying, he can’t tell. It’s a slow, long wave of crushing intensity and he comes and comes and _comes_. 

John is coming, too. His orgasm is beautiful, magnificent, perfection. It’s a work of art and Sherlock _loves_ him. 

— — 

He’s had John’s room in his mind palace for a couple of years now. Sherlock had it built in three weeks after John had moved into 221B. After Sherlock, having smoked half a pack of cigarettes on top of the two nicotine patches on his arm, had realized that what he was feeling for John must be _love —_ this weird fascination with him, this inability to focus on anything but him, this urge for him to be well, to be safe, this need to be around him, close to him at all times. 

It had been his refuge when he’d had no other, down in cells of Eastern European criminals, or when he’d craved cocaine so hard it had hurt physically. 

For years and years and _years_ it had existed only in his mind, and now it had become a real place. A real event. _True._

Sherlock had etched the date it had turned into reality into the surface of the kitchen table of John’s room, with a scalpel, one Sherlock had nicked from the section of his mind palace where the memories of John’s clinic are stored (such a tedious and uninspired place, a missing scalpel doesn’t bother anyone). 

The events subsumed as _John’s room_ had become real. They became real in the way that things waited for, hoped for for so long, eventually happen — different from the fantasies. So much more intense, rather more difficult, and infinitely more rewarding. So much so that John’s room had to be enlarged, to make space for all the details, for everything that Sherlock had felt. 

The day it happened was also the last day that John had woken up in his real room, the one upstairs. Before that, they had been lovers on unspoken terms, kissing when no one could see them. They’d made love secretly in the afternoons or mornings, and never dared to speak about it. At night John had slept in his own room, still unsure if Sherlock wanted him like that. Like someone Sherlock wakes up next to, like someone he cares for. Like someone he loves. 

Until then, John hadn’t had any idea that loving him, caring for him, was the thing Sherlock wanted most of all. Sherlock hadn’t known how to tell him. 

He does now. And he does tell him; makes sure he knows. He cooks for John when he doesn’t expect it. Spends hours in the kitchen finding the perfect recipe for an ingredient John likes. 

He makes sure that John’s room isn’t something that only happens in his mind palace. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Cover] John's Room](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14287038) by [allsovacant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allsovacant/pseuds/allsovacant)
  * [[Podfic] John's Room](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14476056) by [Lockedinjohnlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lockedinjohnlock/pseuds/Lockedinjohnlock)
  * ["john's room" in verses](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14488497) by [ennisnovember](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ennisnovember/pseuds/ennisnovember)




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